A teenager from the US managed to clear the blind spots of her mother's car, using a webcam and movie projector.
As every driver, and also every cyclist, knows, a car's blind spots can become extremely dangerous, as they obstruct its visibility. Even though the Companies are working on various high-tech solutions to solve this problem, a 14-year-old from Pennsylvania, United States of America, took a low-tech approach to create a smart solution.
Alaina Gassler decided to put a camera on the outer metal rib of a car, the one on the windshield and side window, that could record everything covered by the eyea of the driver. She then used a projector to project live onto the inside of the pole what the camera was giving her. The image lined up exactly with the natural landscape.
Check out the video below with the results:
The approach is surprisingly effective, with the car's pillars appearing almost transparent and the driver easily able to see into the car's blind spots, even when it was in movement. Gassler says she used a reflective fabric to make the image brighter and clearer and only reflect the image to the driver.
For her efforts, Gassler won the first prize in its science and engineering competition Broadcom Masters for middle schools, which came with the amount of money of 25.000 dollars. Using fairly simple and affordable materials, her concept could eventually be adapted for commercial vehicles as a standard safety feature.
